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Spirit moves priests to make a journey to CNY

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske Staff writer

Standing outside St. John The Evangelist Church here at twilight, the Rev. Joseph Amoako-Adusei, 70, still remembers the culture shock of serving his first Mass at St. John The Baptist Church in the Oneida County community of Rome.

Amoako-Adusei, now a monsignor serving a parish of 2,000 people, was the first of six Ghanaian priests to arrive in the Syracuse diocese. Bishop James Moynihan began sponsoring African priests for three-year terms in 1996, in part driven by the shortage of American priests.

Back then, priests in Ghana and Syracuse didn't know much about each others' cultures. Those in Syracuse didn't know, for instance, that it's taboo in Ghana to use the left hand for anything other than personal hygiene. Amoako-Adusei noticed during his first Mass.

"I saw someone giving Holy Communion with his left hand and really, I was shocked," he says.

Soon after he arrived in Rome, Amoako-Adusei picked up a Catholic newspaper in which a priest said African priests couldn't reach American parishioners. They wouldn't be able to overcome cultural differences, the priest wrote.

Culture shock

Amoako-Adusei thought of Ghana: "Well, missionaries came here and they didn't know our culture and they had some success."

To prepare for work in Syracuse, Amoako-Adusei joined other African and Polish priests for six weekly, hour-long "inculturation sessions" with Sister Roberta Southwick at the Syracuse chancery.

The diocese is reviving the program this year, spokeswoman Danielle Cummings said.

Southwick, who has since moved to Utica, recalled one of the African priests' main concerns: communicating. When they delivered homilies, parishioners didn't respond with shouts and songs the way people did in Africa. Instead, parishioners complained they couldn't understand the priests' accents, or assumed they didn't speak English.

Learning to connect

The priests came from former British colonies such as Nigeria, Ghana and Uganda, where English is the official language. But they grew up pronouncing words at the back of their throats, Southwick said.

She had taught English for five years in Japan and studied linguistics at Boston College. She showed the priests how to practice enunciating with their lips, exercises she called "accent elimination."

The priests were not allowed to deliver Sunday sermons until they finished the course. Some, including Amoako-Adusei, practiced homilies with Southwick and invited her to watch them preach.

"I remember saying to Joseph what you really want to look for is that the people are getting the message. It's not so much the response you want to look for as that people are listening," she said. "And they were listening."

Southwick told the African priests that American Catholics are more subdued, and that their silence often signals contemplation.

She told parishioners that the priests had studied English for many years. Amoako-Adusei attended seminary for six years before traveling to England, where he earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Hull and a post-graduate degree at Oxford.

Southwick suggested parishioners who had trouble understanding the priests ask the men to slow down or explain. She enlisted parishioners to help the priests with American routines, from reading restaurant menus to listening to American radio shows.

She took Amoako-Adusei to a car wash, she said, "Which was just totally different from anything he had experienced."

With time, the priests began to advise new arrivals. Ghanaian priests arrived, as Amoako-Adusei did, accustomed to having paid cooks. He told the priests to learn to prepare simple dishes like beef soup, because, "in the U.S. if you don't know how to cook, you'll starve." Those Amoako-Adusei helped include the Rev. Lawrence Mensah, 54, who's since left but was visiting St. Margaret's Church in Mattydale last month; the Rev. Edward Owusu, 47, serving at St. Mary of the Assumption in Binghamton, and the Rev. Gabriel Berko, 42, serving at St. Mary's and St. Peter's churches in Rome.

Amoako-Adusei said he was surprised by the similarities between parishioners in Central New York and Ghana. People in Rome were more devout than he'd expected. The large Italian and German immigrant families reminded him of extended families back in Ghana.

By the end of his stay in Rome, he said, "I felt I was with a family, like here. I didn't feel like a stranger at all."

So far, 22 African priests and 10 nuns have served in the Syracuse diocese. Thirteen of the priests and five of the nuns are still here.

During a visit to the state fair last month, Berko, Owusu and Mensah discussed the questions parishioners still ask: Did you see wild animals back in Ghana? Did you live in a house? Are your people starving? At war?

"I never get annoyed," said Owusu, who saw his first "wild" animals at Rosamond Gifford Zoo at Burnet Park in Syracuse. "I laugh."

During his three years at St. Margaret's, Mensah says he educated parishioners about Africa through conversations, chance encounters and service: